Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

My car’s OTA update broke Android Auto

imdanielkendall.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 217 posts

Re: My car’s OTA update broke Android Auto

#141

Post by JoshTriplett »

taneq wrote: post #130
JoshTriplett wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emphatically not. I want the head unit to act as a dumb terminal for the phone. My first instinct would be a USB-C docking station supporting DisplayPort video, various interesting USB devices, and a descriptor that makes it clear it's a car's head unit so the device can intelligently offer a car-specific experience.

Oh, right, more like a car-flavoured docking station? That does sound better, it relies on the car for less in terms of functionality so it should be more consistent and futureproof.

Yes, exactly. And USB enumeration has the advantage of being extremely standard and making it easy to extend by adding additional devices rather than changing the data stream to the existing devices.

Re: My car’s OTA update broke Android Auto

#142

Post by groby_b »

foofoo55 wrote: post #65

> I am not your QA department The article is a lovely cathartic rant against agile software development methodologies applied in the wrong place in the wrong way, whether or not the software(s) in question used such methods. On of the worst assumptions, I believe, is that the end-user is willing and able to function as testing/QA without detriment to the product and company.

This is a general belief of our current version of capitalism. As much work as possible is outsourced to the user, the gains are captured by the company.

See also self-checkout etc.

Re: My car’s OTA update broke Android Auto

#143

Post by fragmede »

UqWBcuFx6NV4r wrote: post #118
denkmoon wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To what end? Pleasing a few nerds? Nerds that are just as likely to have ripped out the OTA modem or not be using a car like that.

It is genuinely lost on me why tech nerds specifically have a hard time grasping the idea that they are not the only people that matter. That sometimes, someone will know that something will upset computer nerds, and will still do the thing, because they see it as worth it overall. Like spoilt children. I genuinely don’t know if it’s the decades of SV pandering or what. MOST OF THE TIME, NOBODY CARES ABOUT YOU. And t…

Instead of picturing spoiled children, who are mad about something that doesn't matter, like spilled ice cream, instead consider civil rights movements, for the modern era. The point is to make people care about something that will affect them, sooner or later. Like the right to repair. Nerdy at, until farmers got involved, and there are specific monetary issues involved. Most of the time, people don't care, but people are going to care if farmers don't do their job and there's no food.

Re: My car’s OTA update broke Android Auto

#144

Post by maxdo »

rootusrootus wrote: post #56
maxdo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you settle with one failure story for another failure story. there are companies with amazing software experience, Rivian, Tesla, Nio, Lucid, even gm is start moving into that direction, and WV is buying software from rivian.

> there are companies with amazing software experience, Rivian, Tesla, Nio, Lucid I own a Tesla, and a Ford. Amazing is not how I would describe the Tesla software experience. It lacks features like iMessage for group and for non-phone recipients that I am able to use in my Ford. Even though many people would say the Ford software is otherwise inferior. And if history is anything to go by, there are features in CarPl…

i can create an entire list of features, that will never ever be in CarPlay, because it's not made of this is just a dongle on steroids, not a proper way to make your car smart.

Joe mode ( silent your car when baby sleeps)

automatic profiles that are connected all the way to what music played and in what device, headphones seamlessly stop playing after i go into the car from the gym

send navigation to car from any device , while I'm driving my gf or friend can send it, so i do not distract myself

proper navigation , order management etc as part of the vertical integration, including re-routing to less busy charger etc.

Re: My car’s OTA update broke Android Auto

#145

Post by maxdo »

BeetleB wrote: post #121
maxdo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why on earth you need an aftermarket receiver of Bluetooth? The cost of the module is few dollars. My cheap ac has bluethooth, just to connect it wifi, i used it once in it's lifetime. The entire idea that everytime you sit in the car you need to pair your devices, what if you have several devices in the car etc ? it's such a horrible, broken, neurotic idea.

> The entire idea that everytime you sit in the car you need to pair your devices, Why would you get that idea? Do you have to pair your phone every time for all other Bluetooth products?

because that's the only way to use that CarPlay, if you need music, navigation, etc. if you have a standalone computer you don't have to do so.

Re: My car’s OTA update broke Android Auto

#146

Post by maxdo »

cyberax wrote: post #53
maxdo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you settle with one failure story for another failure story. there are companies with amazing software experience, Rivian, Tesla, Nio, Lucid, even gm is start moving into that direction, and WV is buying software from rivian.

> there are companies with amazing software experience, Rivian, Tesla, Nio, Lucid Are you fucking serious? Tesla's head unit software is barely passable. It's shit. Nearly half of the screen is taken by useless toy car depictions, and navigation can't even render the full street names because the width of the input field is fixed.

huh? it's not half, and it has speed, speed limit and other items in the same area.

Car is usable, i use it to open trunk frunk and check the status the door/trunk. I'll tell you more , that type of visualisation exists in almost every single modern car.

their navigation is just the best not sure what problem are you talking, it's FSD knows better where to turn vs myself in unfamiliar area. I do have less miss exists on fsd with myself. Yesterday i 0 touch 1h 30 min drive from long island all the way to a very busy manhattan street. tons of exits, complicated connections etc.

It's not even comparable. Everything else feels like a horse carriage vs space ship.

Re: My car’s OTA update broke Android Auto

#147

Post by cyberax »

maxdo wrote: post #146
cyberax wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are companies with amazing software experience, Rivian, Tesla, Nio, Lucid Are you fucking serious? Tesla's head unit software is barely passable. It's shit. Nearly half of the screen is taken by useless toy car depictions, and navigation can't even render the full street names because the width of the input field is fixed.

huh? it's not half, and it has speed, speed limit and other items in the same area. Car is usable, i use it to open trunk frunk and check the status the door/trunk. I'll tell you more , that type of visualisation exists in almost every single modern car. their navigation is just the best not sure what problem are you talking, it's FSD knows better where to turn vs myself in unfamiliar area. I do have less miss exists…

> huh? it's not half, and it has speed, speed limit and other items in the same area.

I think it's 40%? Most of this screen is utterly useless for me. I don't care about "other items". I want more map, and next several turns in that spot.

The speed limit can stay in a nice carved-out area at the top left.

> Car is usable, i use it to open trunk frunk and check the status the door/trunk.

Oh wow. Being able to opening the trunk is now the pinnacle of usability. How about a glovebox?

How about making the Homelink button always visible, because GPS is not always reliable. How about making Bluetooth icon always available? Ditto for compass.

> I'll tell you more , that type of visualisation exists in almost every single modern car.

Nope. It's just copium.

Re: My car’s OTA update broke Android Auto

#148

Post by mook »

itake wrote: post #135
wyager wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The averaged-over-usage-lifetime software quality for things like cars or video games is worse today than it was before OTA updates Arguably the peak quality after a few months/years of fixes is better, but that doesn't really matter because usage is front-loaded

I remember my parents needing to buy very expensive map DVD disks in order to update the car’s navigation system to update their car’s navigation computer. The disks were very expensive and if you didn’t update them it wouldn’t know about new roads (slower trip, missed turns, etc).

That's why we have Android Auto: move the updates to a thing that already has frequent Internet connection, and if the update goes wrong it's clearly the fault of this other company, plus the car itself still works fine.

Jeep already had an OTA the broke the ability for the car to be driven.

Re: My car’s OTA update broke Android Auto

#149

Post by charles_f »

> I have to call MINI at some point and demand they fix this garbage

That would never occur to me. Whenever something produced by a large company breaks, I pretty much assume there's no signal possible back to whomever is responsible for the breakage, and that whatever is broken now is broken forever.

To the author's point, they're A-gile, but forgot that the first step in the process was customer feedback

Re: My car’s OTA update broke Android Auto

#150

Post by maxdo »

cyberax wrote: post #111
maxdo wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you just stuck in this paradigm, this apple/auto surprised me so many times : - when you need to re-pair Bluetooth - when you forget the cable to charge and you need to drive - when you want to share your car to someone and they need to spend 5 minutes to accept every single ToS possible to simply put a GPS - several people with phones paired before, now you dealing with complete random you name it. - you listen musi…

The TLDR; answer to all your problems is: "Just use a freaking USB cable". I rent tons of cars and my experience with the wired AndroidAuto is: 1. Plug it in. 2. That's it. It just works. No ToS or any other crap. 3. The same cable also supplies power! Some cars _may_ need me to press something on the screen to switch to AA mode, but it's rare. And it works perfectly with _everything_ on my phone. A navigator properl…

for rental it honestly probably make sense, since this is not your car.

Why on earth everytime i sit in the car i have to neurotically plug the cable. I had situations i forgot and in the middle of the ride i started to look for cable or try to wire car play, simply because i figure out i don't know where to go .

This type of crap is not convenient and simply dangerous.

what proper car should offer: keyless enter; keyless profile adjustment including seats, heat, music profiles, etc wheel etc; keyless start and go;

one of the best tiny features i have. In the morning i drive to work; i can go several ways there depends on traffic, My car knows that in the morning i go to work; GPS is on, traffic is calculated.

I open the door , my music started to play, I press gas and drive; zero cables, zero pairing ; open the door and drive.

Post reply on HN